Tag: two

To the best of our knowledge, we humans can only experience this world in three spatial dimensions (plus one time dimension): up and down, left and right, and forward and backward. But in two physics labs, scientists have found a way to represent a fourth spatial dimension.

Although we experience time in one direction-we all get older, we have records of the past but not the future-there’s nothing in the laws of physics that insists time must move forward. In trying to solve the puzzle of why time moves in a certain direction, many physicists have settled on entropy, the level of molecular…

Although we experience time in one direction-we all get older, we have records of the past but not the future-there’s nothing in the laws of physics that insists time must move forward. In trying to solve the puzzle of why time moves in a certain direction, many physicists have settled on entropy, the level of molecular…

Can a penalty kick simultaneously score a goal and miss? For very small objects, at least, this is possible: according to the predictions of quantum mechanics, microscopic objects can take different paths at the same time. The world of macroscopic objects follows other rules: the football always moves in a definite direction. But is this always correct? Physicists of the University of Bonn have constructed an experiment designed to possibly falsify this thesis. Their first experiment shows that Caesium atoms can indeed take two paths at the same time.

Imagine trying to measure a tennis ball that bounces wildly, every time to a distance a million times its own size. The bouncing obviously creates enormous “background noise” that interferes with the measurement. But if you attach the ball directly to a measuring device, so they bounce together, you can eliminate the noise problem.